Be Excellent To Each Other

Came home late after board games (we started having small scale test runs of Blood on the Clocktower at 22:30, which seemed like a good idea at the time) to find my smart lamps on and my radios blasting Absolute 80s.

Turned out there'd been a power cut, so those devices just decided to reset themselves.

Then just after dropping off around 1:30, they all came on again as the power dropped and returned. Had to fumble for the wall switches in the gloom.

Now I'm pretty sleepy but at least it's Friday.

I'll get round to restoring all my pre-sets just in time for the next outage...

Fentimans have changed the recipe of their Curiosity Cola (and perhaps other drinks too) to include sweeteners and lower the sugar content, and they now taste like absolute bunkum. Completely ruined.

The combustion chamber of a Mk II North American Veeblefetzer.

Frankly, I couldn't give two tuppence turds.

Thomas Fentiman, an iron puddler from Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire, acquired a recipe for botanically brewed ginger beer in 1905 when a fellow tradesman approached Fentiman for a loan. The loan was never repaid so Thomas became the owner of the recipe.

So his name is Fentiman, not Fentimans, therefore the product name should be Fentiman's.


(I'm not saying anything about "Fentimans 'of' changed.")

Is this a sugar tax thing?

I've no idea. That's the only reason that springs to mind, but it doesn't make a lick of sense if it is because Fentimans were always a premium priced product anyway, so if they had to put the price up slightly because of the sugar tax then (a) I would have expected them to do that when it first came in, and (b) I'm not convinced their target market would care.

Are you sure you've not inadvertently bought a light version or something? Just I can't see any mention of artificial sweeteners on the ingredients on their website. I hope it's not true. I'd rather have just water than anything with artificial sweeteners.

You ok Warhead?

No, definitely the proper stuff. They've added stevia to it.

No, I'm not. I thought I'd typed 'tuppeny' turds, but didn't notice that the spell checker had changed it 'tuppence.'

Is anybody wearing a shirt that’s designed for men that only has one breast pocket on it today? If so, please can you tell me what side it’s on? Your (the wearer’s) right or your left?

Left.

I'd have thought the left would be the favourite side for a pocket for the right hand to go into it.

Perfect. Thanks both. This was my guess but I wasn’t certain, and Google had examples of both.

Without clicking, is that when Chinny freaked out about the "phone" pockets?

Edit: It is! Ah classic!

I have learned from that thread that I used to

a) buy shirts with breast pockets
b) put my phone in it

What the fuck?!

You don’t buy shirts with breast pockets now? Where do you keep all the cool stones, sticks and conkers you see when you’re on a walk?

These days I buy shirts with tit pocketz. Two tit pocketz at a a minimum, three in total if I recall correctly.

They're just breast pockets.

When I was on office based I.T. support I had a folded sheet of A4 paper in the shirt pocket, and a pen, so I could easily make notes when I was visiting a customer. When I was a mobile customer service engineer I had to wear a company polo shirt with no pocket, so my pen had to be in one of the many pockets in my work trousers, as was my phone. Since retiring, and getting a new phone, I put my phone in my breast pocket because it's too big to comfortably fit in a trouser pocket. When I've been bought a shirt without a pocket for a Christmas or birthday pressie, the chances are it'll never be worn and will end up going to a charity shop.

The Brecon Beacons have had a makeover and are now Bannau Brycheiniog . As with the recent renaming of Snowdon, I like the switch to Welsh but it'll take me a while to get used to the new moniker.

Genuine question. Is it actually a popular move amongst Welsh people or is it mostly just some noisy nationalists who are into it?

Well I’ll just call them mate like I do with everyone else when I’m not sure.

No idea. But I understand the SAS have snipers with directional mics, with orders to shoot to kill any caught using the English translation

Whenever I'm driving in Wales I always slow down for the arafs.

I was a bit underwhelmed by the test of the national warning system.

In a real emergency, I'd like to think that I could re-read the message after pressing OK. Or at least, might be able to if I wasn't dealing with the inconveniences of vaporisation.

I got nothing. Obviously marked for nuclear incineration.

Me, too. The Tories hate the north

I want to customise it to the jaunty "Message from the King" ditty from Hamilton

The noise is was making was so jarring, theres no way I was reading the text before I hit the "stop making this awful noise" button.

Phones may vary, but in Settings > Emergency Alerts on my phone there's options to disable them, disable the certain levels, and to view the history.

I have just heard an advert on Classic FM informing me of the 3pm test. Good work, government ad bookers.

I got nothing on my personal phone (on 3), however, my work phone got it (Vodafone) and everyone else in the family got it (Tesco)

Tesco runs on O2

I got nothing on my Smarty (3) phone. But I am in South Africa, so that's good.

Ours went off simultaneously (Giffgaff) a few minutes before 3pm.

Does anybody here remember when Chris Packham came out? It was probably 7-10 years ago now, when he came out as gay publicly and spoke about his experiences.

Does anybody else remember that, or is it just me? Because today I found out that he is straight, despite my very, very certain memory of him coming out. I wondered if this was some Mandela Effect thing, or just my brain doing a blip.

He "came out" as depressed about then I think, perhaps you are misremembering that?

No, I remember that as an independent occasion, as well as when he revealed his Aspergers. I was just so sure of this memory, but maybe I’m mixing it up with somebody else.

I remember when Terry Nutkins came out as bald.

After a Whitney Houston song, the radio DJ just mentioned a theatre show called ‘The Bodyguard: The Musical’ and when I thought about it I wondered, would you class the film ‘The Bodyguard’ as a musical?

No, like Sister Act it was a movie that involved singing, but the content of the songs never drove / described the plot.

Unlike, say, Grease or The Blues Brothers.

Friday night is party night

But doesn’t the ‘I will always Love You’ song announce to the world her love for the guy who was the bodyguard?

Grease is a musical because the songs are there only as plot drivers within the film, whereas The Bodyguard (and, I think, the Blues Brothers, though I’ve not seen it) all the songs are performed on stage or in rehearsal and stuff.

It's been a long while since I saw it, but I think Whitney doesn't sing that song in the film, it's sung by a dude on a jukebox in a bar. Whitney's version is on the end credits.

For the Blues Brothers it mostly fits the "movie with songs" bit, except for Think by Aretha Franklin, where she randomly bursts into song and starts singing about Matt leaving with the Blues Brothers. There's also a case for Do It Right in Ray's Music Exchange, but at least there isn't an invisible band playing in that scene.

Fair enough. I also haven’t seen The Bodyguard for at least a couple of decades, and you definitely have more knowledge of Blues Brothers.

What about the Elton John film? The songs are all part of the ‘life of a singer’ action, as far as I recall, but there is at least one occasion where the ‘real’ action departs into some kind of dreamscape with Elton floating off his piano stool and flying as he is playing.

What an amazing day (weather wise)

I went for my customary wild walk/swim/walk and I had 5 firsts for the year

1) First time I've managed the walk/swim/walk on consecutive days
2) First time I didn't need any "getting used to the cold" time when I went in the water
3) First time I've not felt the need to put my hoodie on after the swim
4) First time my ice was completely melted in my second bottle before I drank any
5) First time I ran out of water before I got back home

More of this please...

I got a couple of text messages telling me to follow a link and check my passport validity because the rules have changed.

Like an idiot I dismissed it as spam. Like a different idiot it took me ages to realise that oh, actually, maybe my passport is due to expire. Like a *third* kind of idiot, having proven that yes, I should do something about that, I didn't.

Not until the "your driver's license is about to expire, renew it online using your passport photo" messages also started to arrive.

So now I'm eagerly awaiting updates from the one process so I can start the latter.

This is I think the first time in 46 years an epic level of procrastination hasn't turned out for the best.

I was in a similar bind recently. My Driving License and Passport both expired at around the same time and it's tricky to renew one without the other.

Queue one trip to the Post Office and a new picture that makes me look like an inmate of a Siberian gulag.

Cue*